In his final year in office, former
President Barack Obama’s administration spent a record $36.2 million defending
itself from Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, according to a new Associated
Press analysis.

When the money is broken down, the AP
found that the biggest chunks were spent by the Justice Department ($12
million), the Department of Homeland Security ($6.3 million) and the Pentagon
($4.8 million).

The Obama administration also
denied access to requested documents and information more than any previous
administration. The AP report revealed that Obama’s government “set a
record for times federal employees told citizens, journalists and others that,
despite searching, they couldn’t find a single page of files that were
requested.”

The news wire also concluded that
the Obama administration set the record for “outright denial of access” to
files by refusing to quickly consider requests described as “newsworthy.”

The AP offered this critique of Obama’s
oft-repeated promise to be “the most transparent administration in history”:

The figures reflect the final struggles
of the Obama administration during the 2016 election to meet President Barack
Obama’s pledge that it was “the most transparent administration in history,”
despite wide recognition of serious problems coping with requests under the
information law. It received a record 788,769 requests for files last year and
spent a record $478 million answering them and employed 4,263 full-time FOIA
employees across more than 100 federal departments and agencies. That was
higher by 142 such employees the previous year.

While control of the executive branch
has changed parties, it does not necessarily mean more transparency is on the
way.

President Donald Trump has not
spoken much about government transparency. And last week, several
journalists criticized Secretary of
State Rex Tillerson for deciding to travel to Asia this week without a press
pool to document his stops in Japan, South Korea and China.

CNN’s Jake Tapper described the decision
as “insulting to any American who is looking for anything but a state-run
version of events.”

The Washington, D.C., bureau chiefs at
CNN, the Washington Post, Fox News, the New York Times, the Wall Street
Journal, NPR and others wrote in a letter to Tillerson’s staff that they
were “deeply concerned” about the secretary of state choosing to ditch the
media.